Thursday, March 27, 2014

Amid the claim that the Bicol Region has improved its based on latest survey, another agency says the region contributes the highest percentage of poor to the country’s population.

Camarines Sur

The Regional Office of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) declared that Bicol ranked number one in the percentage share of the poor population among all the country’s regions.
In the latest report to the Regional Development Council chaired by Albay Govenor Joey Salceda, NEDA said that Bicol contributed some 2.3 million or 9.9 per cent to the country’s 23.8 million poor populations as of last year. It tops the list of the poorest region in terms of population share, NEDA said.

This means that one of 10 poor people in the country comes from Bicol, a region rich in mineral and marine resources and well-visited eco-tourism destinations distributed among its six provinces, seven cities and 107 municipalities.

Of these provinces, two made it to the top 10 nationwide with the highest share in the poor population. Camarines Sur with 3.3 per cent and ranked 3 and Albay, number 10.

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) emphasized that of the total of 2,276,848 poor residents in Bicol, 77,984 are in Camarines Sur and 511,636 come from Albay.

Nationwide, Cebu has the highest share of 4.2 per cent and Negros Occidental follows closely with 4.0.

Fourth placers after Camarines Sur are Leyte and North Cotabato, with an equal share of 3.0 per cent in the country’s poor population; Lanao del Sur, fifth with 2.9 per cent; Bukidnon, sixth with 2.8 per cent; Negros Oriental, seventh, 2.7 per cent; Zamboanga del Sur and Pangasinan, eighth with 2.5 percent each; Davao del Sur, Iloilo and Maguindanao, ninth, with 2.4 percent, and in tenth place with Albay, Zamboanga del Norte, with 2.2 per cent. Masbate, one of the two island provinces in Bicol, is in the eleventh place, with 1.9 percent share nationwide.

"This means that the its gains are yet to trickle down to the masses," he said.

“There is still a need to come up with more investments to create jobs in the region for these economic gains to be felt by Bicolanos under the poverty line, given that employment with good pay remains the easiest way to break out from proverty,” he added.

The latest report on unemployment situation in Bicol released by the NSCB said that more Bicolanos were out of job in January this year as employment rate dropped to 92.5 percent compared to 94.2 per cent for the same period last year.—BICOLSTANDARD.COM